


Circles

by orphan_account



Category: Death Stranding (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant to a certain point, Character Redemption, Crying, Higgs’ Bunker, Higgs’ DOOMs, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Masturbation, Overstimulation, Trans Higgs, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:40:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22306567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A day in the life of Higgs while he’s Peter Englert.
Relationships: Fragile/Higgs Monaghan (referenced), Sam Porter Bridges/Higgs Monaghan
Comments: 10
Kudos: 79





	1. Day {Redacted} within the bunker

**Author's Note:**

> Started writing, had a mental breakdown, bon appetit.

The bunker is usually loud, loud enough to drown out every rancid thought that plagues the mind and sullies the sanctity of a headspace already on the verge of snapping in two. 

But tonight, it’s deafening. 

Pre-Stranding music is difficult, nearly impossible to come by, but when vintage CD players show up in rubble here and there, someone’s always got their hands on it, picking it apart to see what makes it tick and spew those sounds in that authentic way that just can’t be beat. Implying there’s never much of them left to scavenge and actually use. Which means someone’s gotta be diligent enough in that small timeframe to steal it before someone else renders it functionless. 

Good thing the Demens have enough strength to pillage and plunder till’ their heart’s content. 

Higgs had been lucky enough to get word of a porter delivering some particularly fragile package to a bunker south of Lake Knot. A bunker that just so happens to be not too far from his own. Or, rather, _Peter Englert’s_ own bunker. 

What a fun little game it is to play how long it’ll take him to forget his own name. Higgs would bet— _not long_. 

Oh but that name holds power doesn’t it? _Higgs Monaghan_. Like sandpaper across your face, you can practically _hear_ the implications that come with it, how every syllable exudes power beyond conceivable notions. 

Tonight, it means nothing. 

Higgs is tuning out every day of his life up until this point. Yesterday is the last thing on his mind and tomorrow isn’t even within the realm of existence. The ringing in his ears is real though, realer than him, as he wants it to be. 

Some pre-Stranding tune about something he can’t bother to make out. The CD player is scratchy and the beat edges in and out of coherency, bordering on meaningless sounds of static and voices with no tune that, even here, have no meaning. Even in his _bunker o’ nothingness_. But even the meaningless sounds have purpose somehow. Once the tune fades, it’s volume on max and a mind trained on those sounds as if they hold the key to salvation. 

Salvation being, a way out of his head. 

Higgs breaks off the grey, notched dial on the dusty, cylindrical CD player just trying to turn up the music. He wants it to be deafening. 

In one hand he’s got a puncture needle and in the other, a strong grip on his desk. 

Tattoos have always held meaning, as they should. The one on his forehead is a reminder of who he is and yet who he could never be. Though his whole body is littered with them. These tiny little blotches of ink that he’s stabbed into himself on the more challenging nights and the empty days. Little pictures and words and symbols and hieroglyphs. Everything under the sun stuck where the sun don’t shine. 

And in a couple of days when he finally musters the strength to leave his lonely bunker, there will be a few more. 

Right now, he’s dotting the outline of a devil’s head on the top of his left hand. It’s ugly and misshapen and plastered on uneven, raised skin made mangled and repulsive from years of fighting and throwing punches. But _no one’s ever gonna see this body of mine_. 

By 3:30 am, he’s found a new game to distract himself. 

Staring at pictures of that porter, _Sam bridges_ , all day makes his gut twist and his core clench with every idea his depraved mind can muster. The same song has been on repeat for hours but it’s the only disc he has that’s intact enough to play, so on repeat it stays. 

Higgs eyes his three walls covered floor to ceiling in tiny squares of hasty snapshots depicting a man in bridges uniform huffing and puffing down an unmarked trail with precious cargo on his back. Images of his face, his legs, his cargo. Zoom-ins of his throat while he drinks from a canteen of green fluid, his mouth as he chews levitant insects. His closed eyes as he cradles the pod on his chest, resting in a field somewhere unremarkable. Each and every one of them is tied together with red string in an attempt to look tied somehow, truly tied, as though they aren’t just the actions of an envious man wondering how someone can love their world enough to keep connecting and biggering it. Higgs cannot imagine. 

Higgs stares at each little square with parts of Sam’s body and feels that familiar moisture gathering between his thighs. His stomach twists as pussy-drool coats the seat of his office chair, and he lifts his legs, propping each ankle on the arms of the chair. Each finger inside of himself… one… then two... then a painful, stretching three… curling and exploring and playing with every inch of him that hasn’t been overstimulated or numbed to the point of no sensation. 

Sam’s wandering eyes in one photo, how he almost got a whiff of Higgs during one of his usual incognito photo shoots— is enough to have Higgs moaning Sam’s name. He ruts into his own hand like fucking himself hard enough will manifest the real Sam Bridges in his room to fuck him silly till’ he can’t see straight. By now, he’s got one hand parting his hole painfully and another on his clit, pulling back the hood with two fingers and torturing himself with that overstimulating sensation directly on that sensitive cluster of nerve endings that make his head spin. 

Even when he comes around his fingers, feels his insides spasming and contracting around his familiar pair of freshly-tattooed hands, it’s not enough. Years of riding whatever object he can, getting fucked by people he doesn’t know, and nearly killing himself by plugging his every hole with writhing tentacles and masses of tar-soaked entities has rendered him insatiable. He can’t even fuck himself out of this aimless stupor. 

He feels his insides spasm and for a second, his orgasm is enough. But after that immediate fall from his high, all he feels is empty. Each orgasm takes more than the last and soon every picture of Sam is old and boring and Higgs is screaming out of frustration and anger and grief but he can’t even hear himself. The music is too loud. 

By 6:57 am, he’s eyeing his inbox, devoid of mail from anyone belonging to anybody important. It’s never seen a message before, simply full of outgoing rather than _incoming_. But Sam’s codec numbers pop up and it takes everything in him to not form an email eloquently requesting a delivery for pizza with delectable toppings, all of which he almost never fully consumes. It usually sits on his desk or his cot for a few days until he finds the courage to fill his body with more than fingers and toys and finally gorges himself, before that familiar guilt has him waiting days once again to eat. 

It’s a cycle best carried out deaf and numb, so he keeps filling his holes full of grasping fingers and his skin with rusty needles and ink and his mind with images of a man he’ll never conquer, nor be conquered by, and his ears full of sounds he hates but can’t deny, lest he be forced to deal with his own mind. 

By 7:14 am, he’s emailing Sam. 

When 12:00 pm comes around, almost perfectly on the hour, he’s turned off the music. 

He’s already pacing around his bunker, scaling the stairs with his chin in his hand, elbow propped on his other arm, contemplating routes and plotting out plans of attack. Ways to bigger his presence from either coast and how to incorporate Sam into that. Demens need a leader and no one but Higgs can do that. He knows that much. 

Suddenly, his terminal chirps, pinging a request to activate bunker defense protocols. 

Seems someone’s at the door. 

Higgs drags himself tiredly to his computer and looks at the live camera feed. His little gasp of surprise and excitement and frustration and every feeling on the wide spectrum of human emotion is drowned out almost immediately by his own laughter. Sam Bridges is at his doorstep with a cargo box in pristine condition, containing one pizza topped with everything and extra cheese, of course. 

His grin takes up most of his face in a wide, shark-toothed smile that would scare most as he screenshots his camera feed. Sam’s bent over, huffing tiredly and sliding the cargo container into the receptacle. Higgs’ bunker is on the network so Sam takes his time fabricating equipment, using the terminal to manifest and recycle and deposit. 

One PCC and two ladders later, he’s gone. 

Higgs is alone again. He sighs, shoving a piece of crust in his face and licking the grease off of his fingers. 

Each day is unending in its mission to take Higgs’ sanity away. When his fingers don’t fill him up the same, when nerves are dull and frayed, he’s reminded of who made the concept of fucking himself a particularly favored coping mechanism. Daddy and his ways… always one to fuck things up and leave destruction in his stead. Higgs can pry himself open until each one of his holes is gaping and be reminded of that fact, of who made him this way, and yet it’s such a casual thing— memories and thoughts and voices— to reminisce on that it doesn’t even kill his metaphorical boner. He just rides his fingers to the idea of his own trauma and that’s enough to get him off. 

2:00 am rolls around and he hasn’t slept. The days blend together in the midst of wine bottles and cum-soaked hands and eardrums shot from extreme volumes and waking-night terrors o’ plenty. Higgs is giving himself a new tattoo on his calf the size of his palm with an especially shaky hand. 

3:30 am and the ceiling is so beautiful. His mind is dancing with incoherent ideas and images that make him never wanna leave. His thighs are covered in spilled ink and his sweats are soaked through with slick and saliva. The sun no longer exists and artificial lights which sear his skin still somehow feel like heaven. 

Sometime after 4:00, he fell asleep without realizing it. He woke up a few hours later without feeling in his fingers and the imprint of the waistband of his sweats pressed in red lines along his wrist. His mouth tastes like shit and his hand is coated in grease and dried bodily fluids. 

But suddenly, once again, his terminal blinks to life. His body aches as he rolls his office chair back to the desk and squints through the blinding light of the screen. An automated-email from scanners within the hills of Mt. Knot. Seems goodie two-shoes Bridges is making his way into the mountains. 

Higgs sits back and thinks. For the first time in days, he really, really thinks. 

He eyes the pharaoh statue on his desk and the snapshots that surround it. All the drooping lines of red yarn and writing on the walls that he can’t even remember spelling out. Each one finally reminds him of the task at hand, of what he’s been asked to do. This is his life outside of orders and people and soldiers and constructing BTs and little monsters to do his bidding. He’s walking in circles, meandering and trying to find his way yet always winding up back at the front line. Stopping Sam and providing grounds for the final Big Bang that’ll bring a quick end to the days and their endless dullness. A sharp grin grows once again on his face as he watches the live map on his screen, and the little dot belonging to a certain porter as it travels through the mountains, circling and winding through unmarked trails but never stopping. 

Might as well pay Sam a visit. Wouldn’t wanna keep the EE waiting. 


	2. Corruption of a particle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Higgs’ self-destruction and creation with one man in mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There wasn’t meant to be more than one chapter to this, but I decided Higgs needs the redemption arc that was so rudely stolen from us. So here ya go.

When you get used to the bullshit, screws start coming loose. 

Everyday is the same cycle, seven times over all day every day, each and every week, day in and day out. 

Adaptation created the human race. Adaptation developed the brain and the muscles for their true purpose, gave them a keen edge trained on success in the fields they’re meant to exist and thrive within. The mind and its processing, the muscles and their lifting. The heart and it’s expansion. 

But adapting to life in its worst possible state is not what creates grand genetics and golden specimens. It doesn’t create at all, in fact. It breaks. 

The hand-me-down system of genetics and adaptation thrived with one man a few decades ago, in fact the one man it should never have given grounds to the creation of. 

Higgs considers himself a mistake, given this fact. 

He writes in his journal, telling it like it is— _I am not the particle that permeates all existence, but in fact that which permeates the melancholy truth that this world is broken._

—

Higgs meanders around his bunker. 

It was a bitch and a half engineering his little BT monstrosities— his little pets, as he calls them— in a way that would ensure faulty performance when in contact with Sam. Higgs spent a few hours flicking his fingers to the tune of chiralium, feeling out the vibrations of the soft little flakes and hard, golden crystals, dipping his hands in tar and soiling the earth with it until a perfect little monster was born from it. When the hardened tar of its canines were sharp enough, he twisted its internal ‘wiring’ until the last thing it could possibly do was kill. Or rather, kill _Sam Bridges_. 

A man like him permeates life in a way that sickens Higgs, but that man gave way to thoughts and ideas Higgs has never considered. Too special a specimen to let go to waste just yet. 

When he was done fine-tuning the strings on his shiny new puppet, he dissolved it. His own body is insoluble— repatriation makes it so— but his little pets can be dismantled and summoned at will. 

Higgs wonders what that’s like, to disappear for a time, nestled deep in the comforting, warm crevice of nothingness. He’s already decided he’ll never know. 

After he dissolved his pretty pet, a sudden dissolution of the atoms of his body sent him on his way to the peak of a mountain. The cold seared his skin and singed the hairs on his body as though he’d stepped into a fire. But with Sam coming into view rather quickly, his body felt every kind of warm imaginable. 

And then, there was emptiness. When Sam did as he always has and tactfully dodged each blow, without knowing the beast couldn’t _truly_ kill him, tar receded back into the earth and Higgs was left to swallow his own ‘villain speech’ until their next impromptu meeting. 

And thus, emptiness. 

Returning to his bunker was an ordeal. It took everything in him to not dig out a nice spot for him in the snow and lie there until the cold and the ache of his bones and his heart went away. Even if he did that, it wouldn’t _truly_ be gone. He’d always find himself in the ocean of his very own beach, clawing at the golden trail leading his stranded soul back to his abandoned corpse. 

Repatriation sounds like immortality with extra steps, but to Higgs, it’s simply hell with fewer.

Now, that emptiness feels like a ball inside his gut while he wanders against the walls of his bunker like a dog in a crate— dying to be let out but missing the extra thumb to pop the latch. Higgs has the thumb, the _key_ to leaving, but let’s say his arms don’t work and his legs are glued to the floor. Everything that could possibly weigh him down is playing its part in doing so, and he won’t pretend it’s not happening. 

Higgs lets his body go limp on his cot that’s a size or so too small for him and worlds away from comfortable, and simply lie. 

He thinks to himself, maybe if he just lays long enough, still and steady without so much as a twitch, he’ll drift away into something akin to non-existence. No repatriation needed as no death was ever there, and no life to speak of in the middle of two worlds. 

The thought is lovely, but his body aches for stimulation. 

He sits up and turns his back against the wall, flat against cold concrete, and sighs. 

Sam’s face is everywhere. His sparkling eyes on the little pictures that litter the wall, his hair in that neat little bun, his pod-child so happily blowing bubbles up at him. He looks like a beacon of hope and for so many people, he is just that in every literal sense of the word there is. 

Sam Porter Bridges, _the bridge to the future._

And what is Higgs? What does that name mean to people? _The particle of god that permeates all existence_. 

What a load of bullshit. 

Higgs stands up so abruptly, squinting through the head-rush and striding forward towards his computer. He finds that little inbox icon and refreshes and refreshes and refreshes as though something could magically manifest within it as though he has anyone who’s willing to acknowledge his existence. He’s _Peter Englert_ here, and that name means nothing. 

Higgs Monaghan is no different in his mind. 

He shuts his eyes and grips the desk hard enough to chip his fingernails. He focuses and listens, imagining Sam and his whereabouts. He can almost feel him, like the two are in the same room, the same way he could feel him on the mountain and in Lake Knot. He can smell his body, tar-soaked and sweaty, and taste the iron flavor of his blood as it drops out of his nostril from a well-placed punch by a BTs writhing tentacle. 

In his mind, he can see him too, walking in place like a video on loop. 

The world behind his body begins to form. He’s walking— tripping, over rocks, catching himself, sighing. He’s wading through water and swinging the cargo carrier off of his back, drifting downstream with belongings in his lap like prized possessions. He’s smiling. Cradling the tiny human trapped in a pod between his calloused palms and telling it how it’s the best thing he’s ever seen and the reason he gets up in the morning, _the reason he ever made it out of that cave, besides Fragile._

Higgs can see it all. His eyes sting and the desk beneath his grip cracks as he watches it all go by. Teleportation to any location is one thing everyone knows he can do, but not many have seen how he _finds_ the people within those locations— how he sees them and follows them without ever moving a finger. 

Sam’s smiling face makes his arms tremble. The kindness in his voice as he tears off the Q-pid around his neck and wields connection in one hand and prosperity in the other. He is the gift of man which permeates hope. He’s Higgs’ polar opposite. 

And Higgs wants what he has. 

The bunker walls are thick. The room itself is at the bottom of a staircase far enough beneath the surface that if you were on ground-level, you wouldn’t hear a thing besides the drum of rainfall against the barren earth. Or maybe the hum of the terminal blinking to life with expectations of commands and equipment fabrication.

But if anyone were to press their ear against the front door, feel that cold concrete against their skin for just a moment long enough, they would hear a storm. 

Higgs threw everything on his desk to the floor. He started with the computer monitors, and then the rolling office chair— tossing it to the furthest wall. He balled up every line of red yarn connecting pictures and cutouts in both fists and pulled each and every one out in one swift motion. He screamed too, cursed and swore and most importantly— cried, begged and pleaded and asked why, _why is it like this?_

Not even the bunker of a certain Peter Englert could avoid the storm that is Higgs Monaghan. Sam couldn’t, Fragile’s body couldn’t, Capital Knot couldn’t, and neither could a secluded little hideout beneath the surface. 

Higgs couldn’t either. 

Now, he’s propped against the wall where his steel lockers used to lean, his head in his hands and his liner streaming along with snot and tears down his cheeks, staining his shirt. 

His sobs have always come out louder than even his screams. The true him exists within the twist of his gut when he dry heaves through tears and heart-wrenching sobs. But after a while, his body is just silently heaving. He shakes and wraps his arms around himself, rocking in place and falling over with his mouth open in a permanent, silent scream. 

When that too fades, he’s just still, occasionally trembling, shuddering to the beat of his emotions. 

Everyone has a place in their mind they go to when they need to feel safe. An out. An escape hatch they can pop and cover themselves inside of without a thought to the world outside. A pleasant memory, a soothing voice, a calming space they once visited. Higgs can’t imagine a single one of those things. 

But he can imagine Sam Bridges. 

_The aspect of man which permeates hope._ The bridge which connects a race on the brink of extinction. 

Higgs imagines him again. The image of him remains untouched by Higgs’ raging emotions and pleading, fearful and chaotic thoughts. Even in Higgs’ mind, he’s a beacon of hope— a promise of a better future, of easier times. 

The particle of god which permeates all existence and the final facet of man that breeds hope. 

A conduit for destruction and a beacon of hope— imposing creation and expansion where the world needs it. 

An impossible pair. 

Higgs palms his bloodshot eyes and looks up at the bunker door, smearing his cheek against the concrete floor covered in his tears and snot and ink. He imagines being one of those bunker-goers visited by Sam— how good it would feel to be visited by the Legendary Deliverer. The ease of wading into the sweet waters of a life under the full connection of a system uniting the world, of order and peace and prosperity therefore. 

He shouldn’t want it. He shouldn’t be envious and sick with jealousy, but he can’t help himself. 

The particle of destruction yearning for the kindest aspect of humanity that has existed to date. It’s not what he was created for. It’s not the purpose for which his powers were bestowed upon him to fulfill, and it's certainly not what he thinks even to himself that he should want. He wasn’t meant to adapt in this way, to evolve and form the capacity to feel empathy for the enemy— but hell, Sam isn’t even the enemy here, is he? It’s Higgs. 

And just then, the particle of destruction broke itself down and built itself back up in the image of humanity’s last expression of kindness and unity. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YIKES welcome to flavor town where you can have a taste of every emotion known to man. Sad Higgy Wiggy Time ensues but Sam’s gonna come in soon. 
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated! Let me know of any mistakes or leave a kudo if you enjoyed~


	3. Kindness to destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Higgs’ subconscious decides he has amends to make before he can even make an attempt on Sam Bridges.

This is what it looks like right before you fall. 

Intertwining paths of light crossing over one another. The endlessness of a void filled not with that familiar, overbearing nothingness, but blinding light which cascades and envelopes all that it touches. 

When Higgs jumps, it’s like staring at the dirt, face down with no sight of the journey ahead as he walks. He knows where he’s going and he knows that it doesn’t require sight— a metaphorical ‘hand’ to feel it all out will do the trick as it always has. 

But this jump is _sickeningly_ bright. 

His face is bloated and his skin feels chapped, as salty tears chafed and dehydrated; there’s a pounding in his temples too that has him clawing at his scalp for some semblance of release from the pain. Every blood vessel feels close to bursting and those little spiraling cords amid the whites of his eyes are red. He’s bloodshot and ugly, and the thin air around him hangs heavier than it ever has before as though the atmosphere itself is out to clog the windpipe of one _Peter Englert._

But he’s not Peter Englert anymore. Not here. 

He is bled of all his tears and dry. Deadpanning as emotion flees and a cold heart lies in its stead.

The pangs of guilt aren’t fleeting though. They’re strong and long-lasting, and each one leaves a new gash on his heart. A new vise to squeeze him and pump every ounce of remorse and guilt out of him. He’s a shot stag on a hook and he’s being bled dry for later consumption by an apathetic god-to-be. 

And as soon as he feels the jump ensue, even without knowing where he’s going or who he’ll come face to face with, he immediately feels his chest swell and puff up. More than his swollen sinuses and puckered eyes, his torso rattles with vibrant pangs of fear; both instant regret and yet unsettled anticipation push his soul further down the wormhole so he knows for a _fact_ that there’s no getting away from this. He’s jumping, and that’s the end of it. 

The blood of his eyes are whited out by the comfort of the light. Jumping is never bright but this particular time, it’s _blinding_.

And then it isn’t. 

Higgs sees… very little. He rubs his eyes with calloused palms that are cold with tears, and peers into a confusing darkness. 

Jumps can glitch. _Glitch_ isn’t the right word but sometimes, his heart— assuming himself to have one— takes him to different places than it should. As though the intuition of a soul and it’s ‘feeling’ organs override the panic of a lizard-brain made dumb and deaf to logic by fear, he’s taken somewhere else; entirely apart from his expectations, he’s alone, and he’s wondering why alone always has to be _his_ place. Why it’s his very own little niche carved out so specifically for him that even in ‘heart’ knows it. 

Children whine, don’t they? Children plead for what they want and children tantrum when they don’t receive precisely that. 

Higgs berates himself mentally— that he is a child to himself— as he feels an angry sob begin to rumble his vocal chords. He wants to throw his hands down by his side and he wants to smash his knees into the floor and collapse with God’s name on his tongue, demanding to be let out of this mortal husk that binds him to a life so unfulfilling. 

_I want it! I want it! I want it!_

But what does he want? That porter wary but not nearly so worn. The man that unifies the lost and gives nomads land to call their own. Even those with bunkers to stake claim to, he still manages to give a sense of belonging. Higgs wants to know when his turn to feel known of and longed for will come around. 

Higgs falls to his knees and lets out a guttural grunt when his kneecaps impact on cold concrete. He can feel it through his sweats— the searing cold of the floor. He palms his eyes and tries to claw at his forehead, rip off the jumbled mess of an equation that’s meant to be him but not really _him_. He’s Higgs Monaghan but he wishes to be Higgs particle. He wishes to be a particle because particles are inconceivable and small. So, so very small. Unsightly and unseen. Terribly difficult to manipulate. _Impossible_ to ruin with words or physical attacks. 

He wants to feel unseen as the nip in the air prods and pokes his unusually exposed skin. He’s wearing his ‘home’ clothes, whatever home is, and he’s vulnerable— barren for the world— In this place he can’t even see. 

A horrible scraping sound assaults his ears. 

Higgs’ head whips up and his pupils dilate as best they can to accommodate the darkness. It’s silent. Then— in one fell swoop— metal on metal and before he knows it, he’s in the light. 

He shields his eyes from the light penetrating the darkness and looks up from his spot on the floor. He’s so small compared to the space around him, so weak like a stray mutt cowering in an alley. 

He’s surrounded by boxes. Crates and containers. Shipping tanks and freight-going boxes. A tall roof with scrap-metal walls tells him he’s in a warehouse, and ahead of him— the source of his given light— is a large, metal, floor-to-ceiling door. It’s opening. 

Higgs pushes himself up scurries like a rodent behind boxes. 

His heart took him to people. _Fucking_ people. Higgs can’t do people. 

There’s a beat, and then, a familiar, feminine voice breaks the silence around him, “I had them store it here.” 

Latex upon latex makes an unmistakable sound as it chafes against itself. A full-body suit of protection. Both a shield from the truth and a sword to defend against those who would defile it. Higgs created it and so he should know exactly who it belongs to. He hugs himself tightly behind the protection of a crate and wishes he could escape.

And he can, but that would be an admission of defeat. Higgs can stoop low, but he can’t bring himself to feel defeated. He can’t admit to it so quickly. 

That foreign accent continues, “I told you, it’s here. Everything they unloaded on the last boat in from Lake Knot— it’s all here, in one piece.” Her voice uplifts with a soft pride that _everyone_ knows it to have, and Higgs can hear the smile in her words. “Untouched and in pristine condition,” her voice shifts location as if she’s looking back at someone, “Fragile Express’ best work.” 

Higgs can see her pearly teeth and her perfect face smiling as her chest swells with pride. He can’t help how it’s engraved in the walls of his mind with her image seared into his brain. 

They used to be something, didn’t they? They used to be success and honesty, and they used to be mutual completion and yet most importantly, they used to be _whole_. They _made_ each other whole. They carried cargo hand-in-hand and neither of them let it drop because _fragility demanded a soft touch_. 

Fragile taught him what a soft touch could be, and in the end, all he ever taught her was to hide herself. 

She used to rub the painful bruises out of his skin and the crescent marks of his nails out of his forearms and hush him when he would cry, and she used to be the one constant in his life that could remind him that stability was nearly attainable. It was just beyond his grasp when he squandered it, and he’s regretted it ever since. 

Fragile once knew how to heal him with her kind words and how to pull the truest, base form of himself out of him. There was a time that he wanted it more than anything. 

Yet he laughed in hysterics while he lit the torch that burned that bridge. He watched it crumble and felt the sting after its embers and the raw power they exuded burned out, and yet he still stuck by his actions because it’s what he was meant to be. It was his purpose to destroy and it still is. 

Isn’t it? 

He is the particle that permeates all existence and he destroys it in fell swoops without an ounce of consideration to the aftermath. 

_Fragility and heavy-handed destruction._ He was a fool to think they would ever last. 

“Is that enough?” She laughs, incredulous, “Or are you still having doubts?” 

A gruff voice speaks out. “Cargo’s fine. I’m sorry I ever doubted you.” 

“Yeah—“ someone else agrees, “Fragile Express always pulls through, huh?”

Fragile laughs. 

Higgs misses that sound. He closes his eyes and listens to it— he feels it’s vibration and tune the same way he feels chiralium. It speaks to him, and he feels empty when it’s over. 

“We do try.” 

They turn back around and leave the building, and Higgs can no longer make out what’s being said. 

He didn’t want this. He hasn’t heard her voice in _so, so long_ , and he wanted to keep it that way. He told himself he wanted to know that he could never hurt her again but really, he wanted to know that _she_ could never pull from him what they both know she can. 

_Vulnerability_ is terrifying. 

Latex chafes and squeals against itself. Fragile’s light step echoes through the warehouse as Higgs writhes into himself. He curls until his knees hit his forehead and his body is primed up to disappear. He’s in the fetal position trying to muffle the itch of chiralium that’s telling him to _jump, jump, jump_ away from here and the fresh sobs that are rattling his body. 

He lets one slip, and Higgs hears a barely-audible gasp. 

“Who’s in there?” Fragile’s position stills as she stops dead in her tracks. “I don’t want to hurt you,” _Of course you don’t._ “But I will if you aren’t careful.” 

Even in her taunts, all she knows how to be is kind. Her threats are mere warnings. She’s weak, and that’s exactly what Higgs dares to love about her. It’s what he envies in her— that she’s not afraid to be weak. The audacity of that, to _love_ , makes him furious and disgusted with himself, but Fragile was always what made him fantasize about better futures. She planted seeds of love and hope in his mind, not dissimilar to _Sam Bridges_ in that respect, and yet they differ somewhat. Higgs denied both of their love but his heart scorched one long before he met the other, and he can’t come back from that. 

She’s soft. He knows she is, even with her unsightly figure. Higgs wouldn’t sully whatever precious youth is left within her skin with his touch if he had the choice to do so. He doesn’t want her to go through that again anymore than he wants to feel compelled to do it himself. 

Higgs slaps both palms over his ears and shakes his head. He closes his eyes and bites his tongue because his brain is loud with pleas and threats and questions and he’s so terrified that she’ll hear them beating between his temples in the silence of this room that he has to muffle them before they can escape. 

The light of a flashlight pans from one end of the wide room to the other. She’s searching for something that doesn’t want to be found. 

Higgs shuts it out, closes his eyes and shakes his head, but who would he be if not impulsive?

His voice doesn’t come to him immediately. Instead, it cracks as it leaks out of his throat in broken syllables. His southern drawl is broken beyond repair, leaving out important vowels and consonants that his years of carefully crafted well-spokenness can’t even fix. “ _I’m sorry_ —” His voice cracks on the second word and it’s hardly audible, so he repeats without knowing exactly why. “I’m _so_ sorry.” 

His words are met with a deafening silence. 

He kicks his feet out and thrashes his head with his ear canals still blocked off because he wants to hear his own voice least of all. “I’m a piece a’ shit, honey.” He spits it out like poison and tastes the sickly flavor of his own guilt on his tongue. “And I’m sorry I did all a’ that to you.” He pictures her body in his mind and how her shape still remains, despite the destruction of her skin. He shoves fat fingers into his own ears and sobs pathetically, “I didn’t mean it. I never did I just—“ he sucks snot back up into his swollen sinuses like an ill toddler. “I ain’t had anything like you and it— _Fuck_ , it _scared_ me. You _scared_ me, girl.” 

Higgs hears himself and it doesn’t even sound like himself. His words ring true but his mind loathes them with his entire being because of how awfully they denote this persona he’s built up. 

_The particle of god_ cries out, wondering _h_ _ow could you scare me worse than I scare myself?_

Higgs feels an involuntary jump itching his backside and hears sparkling little chiral crystals around him as they uplift. His heart _does_ control his jumps, doesn’t it? “I wanna make it alright again but I don’t know—“ 

Pleading, it would seem, is the final grain to tip the scale. 

What Fragile sees is a flash of light and a cloud of golden crystal flakes waft up to the ceiling, and as though she never had company in the first place, she’s alone again— bewildered, but alone. 

And so is Higgs nestled deep in that comforting, dark little crevice of nothingness that encompasses his being in the midst of jumps. He lets his not-so-physical body go slack as he watches the beams of light pass. 

There’s no crying during jumps. No tears to fall or sobs to send shudders through his body, as there’s no physicality to his surroundings. He’s drifting through worlds, though not living, yet he isn’t wandering. He’s just _here_ and then he’s _there_. Or maybe he’s nowhere— just where he’s supposed to be. 

Fragility and it’s kind hand of love extends to the one man who has never known it. 

Higgs wasted an opportunity to make amends via unintentional means. As though even the subconscious powers of his DOOMs know that he doesn’t deserve closure, he’s plucked out of that warehouse and thrust where he doesn’t have to be anything at all. 

He’s jumping again, to a place he doesn’t know, but he feels more like he’s falling. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was hardly edited so yell at me for any mistakes etc I may have missed. As always, leave kudos if you enjoyed. It’s probably going to take me a while to update this as I’m working on other things but I’m only planning on one or two more chapters soo.


End file.
